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Algebra Question, Regarding the Distributive Property.

You may not use this at your job, or you may, but you'll use it in everyday life outside of your job. Unlike the social sciences, where everyone has a thoery about everything that disputes everyone else's theory and you have to memorize 30 different scientists about theories that are easy to understand, math is concrete and works the same everytime. My dad loved this and feels right at hoem. His english skiss are another issue. It will take you a while to get it but when you do it will all fall into place. My wife's a social worker who uses very little if anything from her psych or MSW classes. But she wishes she understood math better earlier so she knew how interest really worked and how much money we are now throwing away.
 
And we've found there are 2 areas where social workers get paid well. This is school and medical social work. My wife is in med social work and she makes right around what I make as an accountant - $45K here in Mi where salaries and cost of living is among the cheapest.
 
What the hell is the point to knowing all this? I can honestly say this is something I know I'll never use in my line of work and I don't think most people would use it either.

I can understand needing to know how to solve for x and working with pos/neg numbers, ratio's, etc, but this??:rollno:

studying algebra trains the mind to be able to solve problems even though there is missing information (known as the "x y's and z's") I use algebra all the time, but that doesn't mean I need a pencil, paper and and a formula to get an answer. It is very important to put real numbers into the formula's (you can even make your own formula's) so that you don't think of it as magical formula's.
 
+1

Nowadays, I just plug data into SPSS, but I could compute an ANOVA by hand if needed to. Chances are I never will need to with technology, but it's a good thing to be able to do if the situation were to arise. I love my GPS, but I can also read a regular map.

Plus, many people really don't understand how to interpret stats and what they mean. They just look to see if they have statistical significance without really thinking about what that statistical significance infers. Being able to understand the long hand and math behind the stats immensely helps.

That may not matter all that much right now, but there may come that day that you will want to go to grad school to further your career. Then you'll have to deal with stats and some of the algebra. Even though a Psy.d is a clinical-based psychology doctorate, it still requires a dissertation.

Not trying to be preachy. :ninja:

"If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment" - Ernest Rutherford :p